Chapter 1 - The Shadow of a Ghost
"Because the people who love you for your money are exhausting, and the people who loved you for yourself are gone," Eleanor said, her voice steady but carrying an undercurrent of profound grief.
Lucy swallowed a spoonful of the rich, velvety clam chowder. It was the first hot food to hit her stomach in seventy-two hours, and the warmth spread through her limbs like a drug. She looked across the table at the billionaire, trying to reconcile the fierce corporate titan from the news with the woman whose eyes grew fragile whenever she looked at Lucy’s face.
"I'm sorry," Lucy whispered, gesturing to her own ragged appearance. "I didn't mean to pry. It's just... someone like you could have anyone at this table."
"And twenty-two years ago, I had the only person who mattered," Eleanor murmured, her gaze drifting toward the window, where the cold Boston rain was beginning to turn into sleet against the glass. "A daughter. Her name was Clara. She would have been exactly your age now."
Lucy stopped chewing. A strange, inexplicable chill crept up her spine, distinct from the winter cold she had carried inside for months. "What happened to her?"
"A fire," Eleanor said, her fingers tracing the rim of her porcelain cup. "A terrible, catastrophic fire at our summer estate in Maine. The local authorities found the remains of the house, and they found... what they believed was her. We buried a small, sealed casket in the family plot. My husband never recovered from the grief. He passed away five years later."
Eleanor leaned forward, her blue-gray eyes locking onto Lucy with an intensity that felt almost physical. "But the police never found her silver locket. The one shaped like a crescent moon, with an inscription on the back that read 'My light in the dark.' I have spent over two decades looking at every girl with brown hair and blue eyes, wondering if the ashes they found belonged to someone else."
Lucy’s hand froze halfway to the bread basket. Her breath caught in her throat. Slowly, automatically, her fingers drifted to the collar of her torn jacket, reaching beneath the frayed fabric of her faded sweatshirt.
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Buried deep against her collarbone, suspended by a cheap, tarnished steel chain she had bought at a hardware store years ago, was a small, heavily scratched silver locket.
It was shaped like a crescent moon.
